

East-West Center in the News


(2011-03-04)Improving the sluggish U.S. economy is clearly the top concern of American leaders right now, but U.S. relationships with Asian nations are also of great interest-producing a complex mix of unease and opportunity, according to Dr. Satu Limaye, Director of the East-West Center in Washington. The links between globalization and the rise of China, and related economic, political and security implications, are among the subjects that trouble many American policy-makers, Limaye said during a recent keynote address at the East-West Center's International Graduate Student Conference in Honolulu. Click HERE to view video












(2011-03-15) Toufiq Siddiqi, who has a doctorate in nuclear physics and is an adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, said yesterday that he felt that at the moment, the risk to Hawaii from the Japanese nuclear reactor radiation leaks was minimal. "What would be the greatest concern, really, is if the containment vessels broke. Then it would be a much larger concern," Siddiqi said. "But at the moment, it seems that it is holding out."











(2011-03-21)Monday morning quarterbacks are already asking why Japan, a country known for its frequent earthquakes and occasionally severe Tsunamis (a word that originated in Japan), would decide to build so many nuclear power plants, and site so many of them in coastal areas.
Japan's lack of domestic oil resources was a principal contributor to its role in the World War II, and the end of that war did not change the country's feeling of vulnerability to oil supply disruptions. A program to develop the peaceful uses of nuclear energy was initiated in 1954, and the first commercial reactors were built during the 1970s in cooperation with General Electric and Westinghouse.

(2011-03-17) -- Also appears at: Hawaii Public Radio at http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/content/environmental-education-micronesia

